Batters control strikeouts more than pitchers

In 2011, there were 185,245 plate appearances and 34,488 strikeouts, meaning that 18.6% of PAs resulted in strikeouts. This number is obviously the same whether you look at it from the batters’ standpoint or the pitchers’–both groups averaged the same 18.6% strikeout rate.

Among batters, though, we know there is a large variation in strikeouts. Among those who qualified for the batting title, Drew Stubbs (205) and Mark Reynolds (196) led the way while Juan Pierre (41) and Jose Reyes (41) had the fewest. That range of a factor of 5 is larger than that of pitchers. Among starters who qualified for the ERA title, Justin Verlander (250) and Clayton Kershaw (248) had the most while Brad Penny (74) and Josh Tomlin (89) brought up the rear. (Penny and Tomlin also pitched many fewer innings, and their K/9 rates were even closer to the leaders’.)

Click through for a histogram of the 2011 season broken down.

This plot shows the percentage of batters (among those qualified for the batting title) or pitchers (among those qualified for the ERA title) who had a given K per PA rate. At first glance, it may look like the distributions are quite similar. Notice, though, that the pitchers have a higher & narrower peak than the batters. Both groups have their peak in the 17.5 to 20% range but the pitchers have a significantly higher fraction of their members in this bin. The batters, meanwhile, place a higher percentage of players at the edges–below 12.5% and above 25%.

The data shows the same as what we described in words above–that batters have a wider range than pitchers. This means that striking out is really more in the batter’s control than the pitcher’s. Pretty much every starting pitcher will have a K rate within 50% of the average, while many batters do not.

I really thought Drew Stubbs 2011 would have the K + SB single season “record” (205 + 40 = 245), but then I noticed Mark Reynolds 2009 season (223K + 24SB = 247). Reynolds can’t be beat when it comes to K’s.

“First, Stubbs has no relation to legendary Los Angeles Dodgers’ OF of the 1980’s Franklin Stubbs for obvious reasons. If you watch a Reds’ game from now until September, you will what I am talking about.”

High K rate does not mean the batter is a hacker. Hackers don’t take pitches, so almost universally have low walk rates. Babe Ruth held the career K record for more than 35 years, he was not a hacker. (He held the career walk record for almost twice as long.) Juan Pierre doesn’t strike out often. He is a hacker, but has fairly good contact skills.

I agree we’re going to see more 200 K seasons, but I still don’t know how many guys we’re going to see who whiff as prodigiously as Mark Reynolds.

But yes, I think we now realize that K’s, in and of themselves, aren’t all that bad. Mark Reynolds isn’t a hugely valuable player, but that’s largely because he’s a truly horrible defensive player. If he had an average glove, he’d be a very good player.

In that same vein, Hernandez’s near record-breaking K year was by far his best season, with a 4.2 rWAR.

At the end of 2002, the Brewers were absolutely miserable. The fans really had nothing to cheer for. So they got excited about Hernandez setting the strikeout record. They started cheering when he struck out. They booed when he didn’t. For some reason, he found this offensive. He got really mad.

Anyway, he would up sitting out the last series of the year (at St. Louis) to avoid setting the record. The fans were kind of upset, because it was the one interesting thing happening to the team that year. And it prevented the Brewers from (at the time) having the single-season SO leader in both leagues, as Rob Deer’s 186 in 1987 has still only been topped once in the AL, by Jack Cust in 2008.

Thome’s slash lines in those four years
.277/.426/.540 OPS+141
.266/.398/.532 OPS+132
.291/.416/.624 OPS+170
.266/.385/.573 OPS+154
he had eight full seasons with an OPS+ of over 150 with no less than 134K in any of those years and a 9th with (only) 113K. In 2002 he had an OPS+ of 197 with 139 Ks. I guess he hit them pretty well when he connected

Interesting post. You may know that looking at the variation in certain stats and comparing hitters to pitchers has been done before. I did something on it, building on Bill James and Rob Wood. Here is the link:

It seems like in stats like SO rate, BB rate, HR rate, Hit rate, batters vary more than pitchers

In his article “Hitter or Pitcher,” which appeared in the “By the Numbers,” the newsletter of SABR’s statistical analysis committee, Rob Wood supposed that there is a league where all the pitchers are of equal ability but the hitters vary as they normally do. Then we have to conclude that all the variation in what happens is due to the hitters. Baseball would be 100% hitting. So he looked at the variance in several stats of AL hitters and pitchers in 1987. One advantage of using the AL was that the pitchers don’t bat so their poor performance would not artificially increase the variance of the hitters.

So he found the variance in various stats for the pitchers and hitters. Then he added them to get total variance.

I think you would expect this. Position players can be good different ways. Ozzie Smith’s career value is to far from Frank Thomas’, but they did it completely differently. We could probably find another good RF/CF with as much offensive value as Ichiro, but much more power, many more K’s and BB’s, much lower BA. For pitchers they really have much less opportunity to add value in different ways. Basically, the pitcher has to get guys out without allowing many runs to score. Fielding his position, shutting down the running game, and batting can all help, but only at the margins. And while pitching there is only so much he can control. No starter, with 200 IP could expect to give up only 5 HR, or only walk 10, or K 400. If they tried to do one of those they would do so very badly on other aspects of pitching that they would be worse off. Pitchers are selected to be in the ML in no small part by their abilities in the things measured by the rate stats given above.

I don’t know if anyone’s brought this up before, but I mostly read HHS on my mobile device, and I think that one small change to the site would really help people like me who look at the site using mobile devices.

When I look at the site, there are usually a half dozen new posts or more (That’s because unlike most of you, I have a job, kids to raise, and don’t live in my mom’s basement and thus can’t be on the site 24/7–Kidding, kidding–please no hate mail) I usually start with the newest posts, read all the comments…then I want to move to the next newest post…but getting there, at least on my device, isn’t so easy. It’d be cool if there was a button for “next post” at the end of the comments.

Unfortunately the mobile theme is a lot less customizable than the desktop theme, where I have added a lot of plugins and done a lot of manual coding to add all the features we have. I think there are some pay options out there for mobile themes I could get that have more options but I can’t really justify the cost right now.

Re strikeouts: Here’s a shout-out to just-retired Mike Cameron, who had a marvelous career (sadly with no World Series appearances to show for it) and who is also the all-time strikeout king of center fielders.

Alba. Try going to the very bottom of the comments and keep scrolling below that to the very bottom of the page. You should see Mobile Theme and a button to the right that says On. Tap that and see if it works